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This is a response to Jacques Bren's post on the equipment wanted / for sale forum, because it won't let me reply there.
One possible lead: there was a guy called Grahame Newnham who, until he died in 2020, was certainly the UK's and arguably the world's leading expert on Pathescope stuff. He was also a dealer of 9.5mm equipment and consumables. When I worked in film preservation in England in the late '90s and early '00s, he was the go to for 9.5mm leader, cores, etc. etc. Although his main collecting focus was 9.5mm, there is a significant amount of 17.5mm content on his website, too.
It appears that his collection was acquired by the University of Southern California after he passed, and that (looking at the front page of his website) there is also still an active 9.5mm enthusiasts' group that is holding a festival later this year. Therefore, I'm wondering if it would be worth it for Jacques to go through the website to see if it might offer any leads for 17.5mm collectors and enthusiasts who might be sitting on spares.
Once specific challenge related to 17.5mm is that in the early days of the Nazi occupation of France, resistance groups distributed propaganda films on this format, because it had never been marketed in Germany, and so offered an opportunity to escape censorship, However, once the Nazis discovered this, they made a systematic attempt to seize all the 17.5mm cameras, projectors, etc. in existence, with the result that most of the equipment manufactured was destroyed during the war.
One possible lead: there was a guy called Grahame Newnham who, until he died in 2020, was certainly the UK's and arguably the world's leading expert on Pathescope stuff. He was also a dealer of 9.5mm equipment and consumables. When I worked in film preservation in England in the late '90s and early '00s, he was the go to for 9.5mm leader, cores, etc. etc. Although his main collecting focus was 9.5mm, there is a significant amount of 17.5mm content on his website, too.
It appears that his collection was acquired by the University of Southern California after he passed, and that (looking at the front page of his website) there is also still an active 9.5mm enthusiasts' group that is holding a festival later this year. Therefore, I'm wondering if it would be worth it for Jacques to go through the website to see if it might offer any leads for 17.5mm collectors and enthusiasts who might be sitting on spares.
Once specific challenge related to 17.5mm is that in the early days of the Nazi occupation of France, resistance groups distributed propaganda films on this format, because it had never been marketed in Germany, and so offered an opportunity to escape censorship, However, once the Nazis discovered this, they made a systematic attempt to seize all the 17.5mm cameras, projectors, etc. in existence, with the result that most of the equipment manufactured was destroyed during the war.
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